Lit Terms Handbook Flash
Terms
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- Aphorism
- a brief saying embodying a moral concise statement of a principle or precept given out in pointed words. EX: \"Lord what fools these mortals be\"
- Analogy
- an inference that if things agree in some respects they probably agree in others.
- Anecdote
- A short account of a particular incident or event of an interesting or amusing nature.
- Allegory
- a narrative in which characters, action, and sometimes setting represent abstract concepts or moral qualities. EX: The Divine Comedy is an allegory where a literal journey symbolizes a man\'s struggle for redemption.
- Alliteration
- When several words begin with the same letter or sound EX: \"The Soul Selects her own Society\"
- Allusion
- make a more or less disguised reference to; \"He alluded to the problem but did not mention it\"
- Apostrophe
- a figure of speech in which someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and present and was able to reply.
- Assonance
- Rhyming repetition in multiple vowels in a sentence or phrase.
- Cacophony
- an unpleasant mixture of multiple sounds.
- Connotations and Denotations
- denotation: a literal meaning of the word Connotation: an association (emotional or otherwise) which the word evokes
- Couplet
- A pair of rhyming lines written in the same meter. EX: \"Good night, good night! Parting is such a sweet sorrow that I shall say good night till it be morrow\"
- Double Entendre
- A french pphrase for the word \"double meaning\" used to denote a pun with a 2nd usually sexual meaning.
- Epic
- The story of a hero who overcomes goals or obstacles in battles or a great journey.
- Flashback
- When a memory or past event is revisited
- Epithet
- A characterizing word or phrasee accompanying or occurring in the place of the name or thing.
- Epic Hero
- The central figure in a long narrative who possess larger -than-life qualities such as bravery, loyalty, and heroism.
- Foreshadowing
- To indicate something beforehand
- Euphemism
- A nicer way to say something offensive. EX: \"I\'m going to have to let you go\" instead of \"You\'re fired\".
- Hyperbole
- an extravagant exaggeration
- Hubris
- to have excessive pride or overbearing arrogance
- Foil
- A foil is a person that contrasts with another character (usually the protagonist) in order to highlight various features of the main character\'s personality
- Epigraph
- a quotation set at the beginning of a piece of writing
- Epiphany
- A sudden revelation
- Euphony
- an agreeable sound reflected in the phonetic quality of poetic words.
- Paradox
- A statement that contradicts itself.
- Tone
- A quality that reveals the attitude and presuppositions of the author.
- Pun
- A play on words. EX: \"People are dying to get in to the cemetery\"
- Irony: Situational
- when something happens that seems surprising or unlikely
- Dramatic Irony
- when the reader knows something that the character doesn\'t
- verbal irony
- when a character means to say one thing but it\'s heard by others as something different.
- Symbolism
- The use of specific objects or images to represent abstract ideas.
- Synecdoche
- A figure of speech that is part of the whole used to describe the whole.
- Oxymoron
- Conjoining contradictory terms
- Understatement
- A figure of speech that says less than what is indicated.
- Tragic Hero
- A main character that makes a mistake and ends up defeated
- Simile
- A figure of speech that better describes something by comparing it to something else using \"like\" or \"as\"
- metonymy
- A figure of speech that substitutes something closely related for the thing actually meant
- Meter
- The rhymical pattern of a poem.
- Scansion
- examining the meter of a poem
- Rhyme scheme
- The pattern of rhyming lines in a poem or song
- metaphor
- A literary device that takes a word or sentence and changes it into something else
- Tragedy
- A type of literature describing the destruction of a noble or outstanding person.
- Soliloquy
- A speech made by an actor while alone on stage, revealing thoughts
- Motif
- A recurring or dominant element
- Malapropism
- the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one that sounds similar
- Myth
- a legendary or traditional story, usually one concerning a superhuman being and dealing with events that have no natural explanation.
- Onomatopoeia
- using words that imitate the sound they denote
- Parable
- a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that illustrates a moral or religious lesson.
- personification
- the act of attributing human characteristics to abstract ideas etc.
- Rhetorical question
- a statement that is formulated as a question but that is not supposed to be answered
- sonnet
- Fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in iambic pentameter.
- theme
- a unifying idea that is a recurrent element in literary or artistic work